www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - char[] dstring = char* cstring ?

reply Tyro <ridimz_at yahoo.dot.com> writes:
How do I convert from a char* (C string) to a char[] (D sting)?

Thanks,
Andrew
Oct 21 2004
next sibling parent reply Regan Heath <regan netwin.co.nz> writes:
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:21:36 -0400, Tyro <ridimz_at yahoo.dot.com> wrote:
 How do I convert from a char* (C string) to a char[] (D sting)?
The simple answer: char* cString = "abc"; char[] dString; dString = cString[0..strlen(cString)].dup; D allows you to 'slice' a pointer this gives an array of the same type which refers to the original data. The 'dup' above is required if the char* is free'd etc before you're done with the char[], otherwise you can leave it off. There is also a more complex answer because the c string data may be in any number of different encodings. So to convert from the c string to the d string you will want/need to encode from the source encoding to UTF-8 (the D string encoding). What encoding is the c string? If you have no idea, then it's likely Latin-1 or just ASCII, in which case the simple answer should work. I could be wrong AJ or someone else will likely correct me. :) Regan -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
Oct 21 2004
next sibling parent Tyro <ridimz_at yahoo.dot.com> writes:
Regan Heath wrote:
 On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:21:36 -0400, Tyro <ridimz_at yahoo.dot.com> wrote:
 
 How do I convert from a char* (C string) to a char[] (D sting)?
The simple answer: char* cString = "abc"; char[] dString; dString = cString[0..strlen(cString)].dup; D allows you to 'slice' a pointer this gives an array of the same type which refers to the original data. The 'dup' above is required if the char* is free'd etc before you're done with the char[], otherwise you can leave it off. There is also a more complex answer because the c string data may be in any number of different encodings. So to convert from the c string to the d string you will want/need to encode from the source encoding to UTF-8 (the D string encoding). What encoding is the c string? If you have no idea, then it's likely Latin-1 or just ASCII, in which case the simple answer should work. I could be wrong AJ or someone else will likely correct me. :) Regan
Didn't think of that. I used a for loop checking for '\0'. This is great. Thanks. Andrew
Oct 21 2004
prev sibling parent =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
Regan Heath wrote:

 How do I convert from a char* (C string) to a char[] (D sting)?
[...]
 There is also a more complex answer because the c string data may be in 
 any number of different encodings. So to convert from the c string to 
 the d string you will want/need to encode from the source encoding to 
 UTF-8 (the D string encoding).
 
 What encoding is the c string?
 
 If you have no idea, then it's likely Latin-1 or just ASCII, in which 
 case the simple answer should work. I could be wrong AJ or someone else 
 will likely correct me. :)
If it is ASCII, then it works. If it contains any ISO-Latin-1 characters (>=0x80) then those must be expanded to two code units - or give errors. Some people have argued that C functions should be declared as "ubyte*" instead of "char*", because of this very issue... (since the type in D that matches C's "char" is *not* D's char [which is UTF-8] - but "byte") Most of the time, i.e ASCII strings and most C functions, char* works... D does not have characters. It has Unicode code points, which can take from 1 to 4 UTF-8 code units (char) or one UTF-32 (dchar), to represent. A code point might not represent a "character", could be more or less. One grapheme ("character") could possibly need several glyphs to encode. See http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/docs/papers/forms_of_unicode/ The aspects of this is that when you call char[].length (or C's strlen) in D, you get the number of bytes. For ASCII, this is the same as the length of the string. For Unicode (even "Latin" in UTF-8), it is *not*! Most of the time, you can use dchar as a "character" in the old sense. std.string mostly does ascii-only. --anders PS. I suggested introducing the "string" and "ustring" aliases: http://www.digitalmars.com/drn-bin/wwwnews?digitalmars.D/11821
 void main(string[] args)
Oct 22 2004
prev sibling next sibling parent Tyro <ridimz_at yahoo.dot.com> writes:
Tyro wrote:
 How do I convert from a char* (C string) to a char[] (D sting)?
 
 Thanks,
 Andrew
Please ignore. I've figured it out. Thanks, Andrew
Oct 21 2004
prev sibling parent Regan Heath <regan netwin.co.nz> writes:
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:32:26 -0400, Tyro <ridimz_at yahoo.dot.com> wrote:
 Tyro wrote:
 How do I convert from a char* (C string) to a char[] (D sting)?

 Thanks,
 Andrew
What I meant by that was: If a function returns a pointer to an array of characters, how do I save the array pointed to in a dynamic array of characters (i.e. char[])?
I've just realised std.string contains this function: char[] toString(char *s) { return s ? s[0 .. strlen(s)] : cast(char[])null; } so you can just go... char *foo(); char[] s; s = toString(foo()); Regan -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
Oct 21 2004